Assignment 5

I am my experiences, my parents, my relationships, I am a culmination of my entire life crammed into my skull and embedded in my brain. Growing up, I was cared for, I had friends and hobbies. I had favorite movies and music. Over time these friends and interests have changed and I have left some behind. Every single one of these things is still a part of me. The building blocks of my identity. From every tear of happiness to hopelessness, every fight and every bit of love, I have retained all that I have learned and felt. Growing up in the suburban domestic incubator sheltered me from the real wild world outside of my fenced yard and foam rubber on all sharp corners in the house. Toy Story was played endlessly, I really thought Sid was the greatest. That movie led me to experiment with my own destruction and creation of toys. It was great. Along with the endless viewings of Toy Story, the Indiana Jones trilogy influenced me greatly as a kid. I had a grandiose sense of adventure and wanted to explore the world, to this day I still express that yearning for the adventure of a lifetime. I never wanted to do things on schedule or follow rules, ughhhh rules. This led me to become interested in skateboarding. Skateboarding allowed me to do what I wanted when I wanted and how I wanted, there was no waiting for my turn to play, there were no rules, and I was able to explore my surroundings with my skateboard. Concrete feels wonderful, except when it’s ripping your skin apart. My identity has come to be, because of the influences from the skateboarding community, music that I’m into, and who I have had relationships with. I am everything, I am my life.

I’m interested in how my identity and views will affect my research. It’s exciting. Will my sense of adventure and yearning to escape have a negative impact on dealing with people who are stuck for possibly the rest of their lives? Should I ask other commuters if they feel stuck or want to adventure one day? The rigors and schedule of commuting between home, work, and school becomes extremely stressful. I wonder if I’ll be able go keep up with this project as it eats me alive.

Project Idea

I had two ideas for my project. But after some conversation and investigation into my first idea, it really wouldn't work out. So here is my second idea that I'll share.

I am a commuter, I ride Metra in order to get to and from the southwest suburbs to my classes here at Columbia. I wan't to explore the commuter culture, in and around Union Station and on the Metra trains themselves. I have been riding Metra for years and have noticed that it has built a community of sorts. There are groups of people who sit together everyday to and from work, and have become friends through their commute. I'm sure a lot of the people share similar reasons for commuting via Metra. Ex: Cheaper than gas which is gelling less and less affordable. Multitudes of commuters opt to board the trains with a six pack on their commute home. Others sleep. Some even continue to work. It seems as if all of my classes at Columbia have been split between two types of students; commuters and residents. Is there something shared between the commuters at Union Station? What has grown from the relationships formed while riding the rails? Is there a different mindset or attitude shown by students who commute to Union or Lasalle? I am curious to explore this subject of the commuter culture at the main commuter transportation hubs in Chicago, because I am part of it. I have experienced it. I am a commuter and I feel like I am part of something because of it.

Assignment 1

I'm Taylor Radelia and I'm from Orland Park, IL which is in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. My interests include, skateboarding, music, taking photographs, traveling, riding my bike, camping, caring, and feeling sounds. It's really difficult to name one favorite artist, but as of right now my favorite artists are Avey Tare, Henry Wessel, William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Jason Lazarus, Joseph Kosuth, Harmony Korine, Alec Soth, David Lynch, Larry Clark, Cy Twombly, Chris Johanson, and Daniel Everett.

What I do for fun is practically anything. As long as I'm with fun, genuine people in a stimulating environment I'll be stoked. Long conversations with cool people is some serious fun though. So is responsible psychedelic drug use and doing things involving mountains. There are many things that lead up to me deciding on Columbia. Firstly, it's been on my radar for forever, my dad is alumni here so he was excited to hear I was interested in coming here. I have friends who are studying here and have had some really great things to say about their experiences and the academics. Also, due to problems in high school I didn't do anywhere near as well as I am capable of, and Columbia's open admissions policy was sweet. Columbia is also on the cheaper end when it comes to private art schools. Still, +$20,000 tuition isn't cheap by any means. The medium I feel most comfortable working with is photography, I've been exploring the medium long enough to feel confident about transferring my ideas through a lens and onto a frame of film. Though I don't wan't to or like to limit myself to just photographs as a way of releasing things from my brain. I like to dabble in practically everything I have the option to try my hand at.

I'm really excited to use different mediums along with text to explore a place of my choosing. I think that our semester long project will really help me in the future at Columbia when I am enrolled in photojournalism courses and I can use what I have learned this semester in order to explore a group or place with strictly photographs. As of right now I don't have any fears for this class besides blogging. Doing homework on the internet is an easy was to become distracted through other parts of the internet, it's a big, fun place!